Religious Knowledge by James Kellenberger

Author:James Kellenberger
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9783031187872
Publisher: Springer International Publishing

The religious picture or story, Phillips allows, may or may not appeal to a person. It may or may not claim one and “captivate” one.18 But when it does it “regulates” one’s life. Phillips draws upon Wittgenstein’s comments on “believing in the Last Judgment” in his Lectures on Religious Belief, in which he said that this belief will “show” by “regulating in all his [the believer’s] life.”19 As Phillips puts it, “A man’s belief in the Last Judgment may show itself … in the way it determines his attitudes to his aspiration and failures, or to the fortunes and misfortunes which befall him.”20 For Phillips such a picture is not a misguided obsession that cripples thought, as a philosophical picture can be for Wittgenstein, but a source of guidance. It does not show itself in reasoning and is not acquired by reasoning. Belief in the religious picture is not like belief in a hypothesis, says Phillips, a tentative belief or supposition that needs verification. In this he is in accord with Wittgenstein in his Lectures on Religious Belief, as he is in finding no place for the “weighing of evidence” or grounds in the way this and other religious beliefs are held.21

The criteria (rules, grammar) for what is meaningful in religion are internal to religion. It is a mistake to impose the grammar of discourse about physical objects on religious discourse.22 What is meant by the reality of God is determined by the criteria of religion. The “criteria for distinguishing between the genuine and the false [in religion] are found … within religion.”23 Although Phillips says, “Religious doctrines, worship, ritual, etc. would not have the importance they do were they not connected with practices other than those which are specifically religious”—and he gives as an example a prayer for forgiveness, which “would be worthless did it not arise from problems in his relationship to other people”—he goes on to stress that “despite the existence of connections between religious and non-religious discourse, the criteria of sense and nonsense in the former are to be found within religion.”24

Related to religious criteria determining the reality of God, is what Phillips says about God’s existence. God is not “an existent among existents, an object among objects.” “Coming to see there is a God is not like coming to see that an additional being exists.”25 God within religious discourse “is not a being among beings. The word ‘God’ is not the name of a thing. Thus, the reality of God cannot be assessed by a common measure which applies to things other than God.”26

What is involved in coming to see that there is a God, Phillips says, is “seeing a new meaning in one’s life, and being given a new understanding.” Or, as he says in the same essay, “seeing that there is a God … is synonymous with seeing the possibility of eternal love.” “The believer claims that there is a love that will not let one go whatever happens. This is the love of God.

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